


The Dogs of War

by ch1ps0h0y



Category: Original Work
Genre: Demons, Gen, Japanese Character(s), Japanese Culture, Japanese Mythology & Folklore, Post-War, Tengu, Transformation, War, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 23:02:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,511
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3358571
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ch1ps0h0y/pseuds/ch1ps0h0y
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>War can change a man into a demon.</p>
<p>(Original fictional work)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dogs of War

**Author's Note:**

> _"Demons run when a good man goes to war."_

It was the beginning of summer, cicadas heralding the onset of oppressive heat and throngs of students out of school. Saburota's daily commute took him past a cafe every day around 8.30am which blended their coffee in a way he was quite partial to. There was a long line - there always was - but unlike the white-collar workers who grabbed their cup and immediately dove back into seething peak hour crowds, Saburota was in no hurry. Clutching his twisted walking staff, he shuffled forward with the line, placed his order, paid, and had his beverage in hand within three minutes.

"Come again!" the counter girl cheerfully chorused along with the baristas. Given another two hours and three irritable businessmen soured by bad deals the previous night, Saburota knew that her smile would not hold naturally by her shift's end. Still, he thanked her and moved aside, his empty spot immediately filled by another.

The rush of warm air as he stepped outside paled in comparison to the heat seeping past the walls of his paper takeaway cup. That glaring orb in the sky could not scald his fingers the same way as boiling liquid could, even if it could scorch the pavements and roads and raise a heat that would persist past dusk. Such was summer here, although Saburota would not trade the oppressive warmth for milder climes. Nagano was his home; from the Izuna mountain range to the apple tree-lined streets of Iida, he'd walked every inch of it over the course of his long life. Saburota knew the rivers and roads like he did his own veins.

He turned left down the street, sipping his coffee carefully as the ebb of passers-by split and merged around him. Like a stick carried by the river's tide, human life coursed by while nudging him onwards. He went where the crowd dictated - at this time of day, the train station - crinkled grey eyes observing over the plastic lid of his cup. Closer to the main heart of the city, he stepped aside and found a bench to sit on. The crowd filled the gap he had vacated and streamed into the loud, metal snake which would take its passengers to the cities beyond Nagano's prefectural border.

Saburota stared down his nose as a pair of laughing children ran by, unfazed by the heat, blissfully unconscious of the strain their pursuing mother was feeling on her heart. His eyes softened.

The coffee cup was disposed of in the nearest trash receptacle. With effort, Saburota stood and slipped into the somewhat lessened crowd, this time fighting a crossways battle to reach the traffic lights. His route always began here, at the city's hub, treading a long-ingrained route that followed no signage or map. It was a route formed of wide dirt-trodden paths which human feet, wagons, and horses once shared in centuries past.

Tak, tak, tak - his _geta_ sounded a brisk clip against the concrete. Saburota navigated the stream of human life with calm assurance. Past the fluorescent signboards and LED displays, he turned into a quieter lane arrayed with small offices and a police _koban_.

It was here that he saw the man. Sensed him, really. Five, six strides down from the koban and hidden in the shadow of a shuttered door. Saburota paused on the street and took in their tattered rags, the wrinkled, liver-spotted hands which clutched a threadbare blanket around bony shoulders. A wide conical brim obscured their facial features.

As he walked by, he felt the prickling of sharp ice across his spine. Turning sharply, he narrowed his gaze at the ragged man, catching pale eyes peering from beneath the curved brim of their hat.

"I know you," the old man's voice rasped. Fingers curved like talons extended and one pointed at him. "I know you," they repeated, coughing.

Saburota approached and sank to his knees in front of him, saying nothing and caring not for whether his loose trousers accumulated the dirt of the street. He waited for the old man to regain his breath.

"I saw you there," they told him. "When fire rained upon the ground, and shells tore the hills apart. I saw you." The old man's eyes burned through him, seeing past the man to the memory which he placed Saburota at. Glancing up and down the street yielded no passers-by or curious onlookers, so Saburota forwent kneeling to sit meditatively. He gently took the old man's wrist, preventing the outstretched hand reaching his face.

"You think I didn't, don't you. But I did." Their hoarse laughter mixed with more coughing. A shaky finger pointed to his wind-blown, chestnut locks. "Wild hair, a staff in one hand. You fell amongst the men like a thunderclap and tore through like the wind." Wheezing. The old man took back his hand and hunched over with a shiver. "I haven't forgotten," he croaked, "though the decades have passed by me without kindness."

It was not Saburota's place to comment on human sanity. Many things existed on this earth that had since faded into the obscure past: legends, deities, inhuman powers. The dead might rise and the heavens might fall but it would be at the will of those who controlled such things. His job was naught now but watcher of the old forests and mountains, minder of the lesser spirits whether they dwelled in tree or iron.

He touched the old man's shoulder, parting his lips to speak. Long had it been since he had to gather breath to give his words voice, but he remembered.

"Tell me your story, old man," whispered the wind as its fingers caressed a wrinkled cheek.

oOo

He pretends not to notice the wet tracks on their cheeks as he kisses his family goodbye. He pretends not to notice how hard his little cousin is clinging to his hand as he kneels to fold him in a tight hug. The straps of his bag bite through the touch stitching of his military uniform and into skin, weighed down as it is by gear, provisions, and what little personal belongings he is allowed to comfort himself with far away from home.

He kisses his cousin on the cheek and ruffles fingers through streaks of hair growing as unruly and unkempt as his had been before he had chosen to cut it neat. "Be good and listen to your aunt," he tells the boy, smiling at their tearful nod and solemn promise to behave. Knowing his cousin as he does, such a promise is but wishful thinking uttered aloud. All older siblings know the fickle nature of youth.

" _Ittekimasu_ ," he says, because he will come home. In one year, in five, he will come home to his mother and cousin and hold them in his arms again. This is not farewell.

The truck takes him away. He waves to his family until they are mere pinpricks in the distance, specks on the horizon. Then he turns to face the others, young men all, conscripted from the neighbours. They fill one of a long line of trucks headed to the military base somewhere in the isolated countryside. Their bags form a crush on the floor, spilling over feet and pressing against olive green trousers. They sit in mutual silence for a while, listen to the roar of the engine, brace against the jolt of the vehicle as it hits bumpier roads.

"I was born in Ueda," he says quietly. All eyes rivet towards him. He stares at his boots and continues: "Father passed away during the rice riots when I was six. I have one younger cousin. His name is Tomo. Mine is Gouhei." After that short introduction, he falls silent.

A few minutes pass as the other men in the truck glance amongst themselves or look down at their laps. He, seated at the back of the truck, watches the pockmarked road and grass and lumpy skyline slip by. Whether or not the other men respond matters little to him. It is not about making friends or forming any semblance of comradeship but leaving behind something of himself in the memories of another. A man can live beyond his earthly years if he lives on in human thought.

He does not expect an answer. But he is pleasantly surprised all the same when the man sitting opposite him clears his throat and adds his short biography to Gouhei's.

"Born in Toumi. Lived in Ueda all my life. My father and older brother left last month to join the war. No younger siblings. My name is Satoshi," they said, staring at the tightly clasped hands in their lap.

He murmurs a greeting to them. As if Satoshi's words have removed the key stones of a river dam, the rest spill into their own introductions like water tumbling over rocks. Their speech washes over him: a tide of names, birthplaces, descriptions of family and siblings he commits to mind. Eight men, eight names, eight families without a father, brother, son, or lover. Theirs is the only truck he can hear filled with chatter, one lively bubble amidst a fleet of barges bringing the dead to their place of encoffinment.

Just a few more hours and a few more stops to pick up the last of the bodies.

The end of their journey is met with a sense of relief. The base is ringed with concrete walls, barbed wire and hard-faced soldiers with guns. The trucks halt in the parade ground, a bare, uncovered square, and allow the new recruits to disembark. As it is the tail end of winter, the ground is hard with frost and crunches underfoot. No snow, but slippery all the same. Cold air rimes lips and noses and fingers with a pale tinge from the long journey.

Those from Gouhei's truck huddle together until sharp voices have them forming several straight lines. The inspection is brief, the survey approving; they are told their assigned barracks and dismissed.

He, Satoshi, and the others are together in one quarter. Double bunks, four to a room, with a common shower and washroom elsewhere. There is a bit of fuss as beds are decided through the ever-diplomatic solution of jan-ken-pon before they make themselves at home. It is here that they will live for the next few months, learning to fight a war.

Day after day flits past, hard frost turning to a mild spring that is completely at odds with the grim mood hanging over the army complex. The warmth is a welcome change regardless, the sun watching over their exercises in the yard, the arms practice on the ranges. A few sear their fingers on metal items left out too long during the hottest part of the day, and the steadily climbing humidity as the months turn from temperate April to a muggy May begins to drag upon their limbs. Outdoor activity becomes a drawn-out, torturous affair that not a few collapse from.

It is easy to almost forget the war happening outside but for the regular cycle of trucks bringing wounded and dead through the hospital. Actual bloodshed has not yet touched them, yet constant reminder comes in the form of mummified soldiers and wooden caskets. Pilots launch aircraft from the hangars of the base, only to return later in the day in slightly reduced numbers with worn, haggard faces and a cloud of morbid silence shrouding their slumped figures.

From dawn to dusk life becomes a rote schedule interspersed with bouts of forced humour. The air used to be charged with optimism around this time of the year, the hills and paths scattered with the last of the sakura. Students should have been laughing on their way to school. The sky instead bleeds with smoke from crippled planes and distant, shelled villages, while twilight skews with hazy pinks and reds. The chatter on the radio describes countless victories against the foreign land across the sea in spite of the growing number of dead or dying. It is an ineffective salve against rising fear and distress.

Gouhei cannot be sure, but he feels like the horizon may have changed sometime between midnight and the upcoming sunrise.

As black crows thrum overhead, as reports of fire, death, and triumphs in the west rattle through the radio, he has to wonder: is it supposed to make them happy? Is all the slaughter and destruction and terror worth what razed territory they pry from a foreign empire? The men whose lives pour into the earth via gunpowder and steel salt any land they claim and rob their home country little by little of life. He counts one, two, four men who will never return to the empty beds in their bunkhouse, four families floundering without a heart. He, Satoshi, and the remaining two men spend a night in silent remembrance for their fallen comrades while bombs drop over farmland to the south.

The request comes in one morning, close the end of June: their squadron is required as support across the sea on the Chinese mainland. Packing their few possessions leaves the room with a sense of vacancy despite what little has decorated it since their occupation - even less with half their bunkmates gone. Laden with heavy bags and heavier misgivings, they board a convoy of trucks assigned to take them to a port in the north.

 

The calm before the storm is always the worst part of waiting.

Gouhei kneels in the trenches, running his hands over the bayonet several times to make sure it still functions smoothly. Oddly, while the rest of him is trembling from nervous tension, his hands alone remain steady. The earth he kneels in smears his uniform, dark brown mud on olive. To his left, Satoshi leans over and squeezes his shoulder, eyes shadowed by the peak of his cap.

"It's fine, leave it," he says. Gouhei grips the firearm, jerking his head in a nod. Satoshi removes his hand and they go back to waiting.

Their first deployment leaves a bitter taste on his tongue. Setting foot on foreign soil in the capacity of an invader makes Gouhei uncomfortable - they are invaders, no matter how their commanding officer spins his patriotic spiel - and he would be lying if parts of the scenery he glimpses from their transport does not hit him with pangs for home. The lives here are not so dissimilar to theirs. They have farmers, weavers, and industrial workers. They have families, friends, and neighbours.

His is wrenched out of his thoughts by a call coming down the line. Get ready, it says.

The tension ramps up noticeably. He can see it in the stiff shoulders and hardening of eyes. Yet, there is fear as well. Death waits over the trench and wire. Not everyone will return to the barracks at the end of today. They all know this; they have known it for a while.

The signal blows loud and clear over the settled air.

Advance infantry.

Satoshi is up and out of the trench before Gouhei is, but Gouhei is not that far behind. What must the birds above think had they the courage to soar over the battlefield and gaze at the jagged line of men charging through razor wire and pellets of iron? What few trees there are have been uprooted, hauled away by one side or the other to carve into flimsy defences. The ground dips and heaves beneath his boots as he yells with the rest, yelling because he is terrified and because there is a slim, underlying hope that the force of their screams will end the battle before the deaths begin.

He sees the enemy ahead, almost stumbles at the sight of the tanks until he hears the boom-whistle of their own from behind and the crash of mortar in front of foreign ranks. Three more sprays of dirt, advancing closer as those working the vehicles gauge distance with increasing accuracy, and one of the tanks topples head over rear down a slope while the men around it scatter like pins. Some do not scatter far enough.

It is almost, he thinks giddily, like a game of basketball, and the tanks are the hoops.

The scream of the man to his right slides into a gurgle. He senses rather than sees the body topple, but he cannot stop moving, cannot stop to be shocked or afraid or think twice about the reckless way he runs just behind Satoshi - Satoshi, who does not scream a word even after the call to charge and instead has his eyes focused on the barbed wire in the distance.

Which, Gouhei realises, is something he should be watching too, as he trips over the uneven earth and sprawls in the dirt right before a bullet whizzes over his head. The narrow miss makes his heart pound.

Satoshi drops to the ground as soon as he notices him fall, crawling on his belly towards him without regard for the condition of his uniform.

"All right?" Satoshi yells over the crash of mortar less than fifty metres away from them. Gouhei nods and together they carefully wriggle to the peak of the bank of earth they have found themselves behind.

Too far to see the other soldiers accurately, too close to get up and start running again now that the front line has all but shattered into pot-shots and scattered one-on-one fights. The bayonet rifle might hit someone if they are lucky, waste ammunition if they are not.

He settles the rifle against his shoulder anyway, sensing Satoshi mirroring his posture. He focuses on a distant spot where he sees a concentration of (familiar) ethnic faces and squeezes the trigger.

The gunshots used to ring loudly in his ear but now they are drowned by the vibrating earth and desperate shouts of clashing armies. He fires automatically, reloading as needed, unsure if it is his or Satoshi's bullets which injure the opposing men or whether they hit anyone at all. It hardly matters - around them, their countrymen are dying, struggling, moaning. Sweat makes his hand slick as he entertains the dim thought that it could be him next. It could be him, or Satoshi, who next takes a bullet and bleeds into the ground.

...That mortar whistle is oddly loud.

He glances up, cries out, shoves Satoshi aside and tells him to run, run, RUN then throws himself to the side in a mad scramble of uncoordinated limbs and pure terror.

When the shell hits it seems as if the whole world has gone silent. The shockwave pushes him forward and thrusts him into the dirt. He feels rather than hears earth showering upon his back and lies where he is for a long moment, disoriented while the wind rushes across him. Prone bodies, bloodied, burned, crushed, greet him when he peels open his eyes along with the quiet - far, far too quiet for a torn battlefield, where people scream without sound and artillery lands without deafening, hollow booms.

He levers himself up with his arms but ends up falling on to his side with a silent gasp. Nothing is broken, nothing hurts, but the world is tilting and there are muffled voices shouting in his ear and arms trying to haul him up from the ground.

"--ei! Gouhei!"

Somehow he is on his feet and stumbling after Satoshi, held up by an arm. His bayonet is lost somewhere, but when he turns around to look for it he gets jolted by the other man. It is just as well - the odd tilting, rocking sensation has yet to stop and he nearly falls again.

"We're heading back! Can you hear me? Oi!"

He can. He nods, not yet feeling ready to speak. The rest of the battle becomes a jumbled mess of flurried action, being passed from hands to bed, and then dark, fluttering canvas. He and Satoshi remain in the infirmary tent until the sun drapes a blood-soaked curtain over the battlefield, the warfare tapering to a mutual close so both sides can collect their dead before the light completely fades.

Gouhei sees the bodies later once the ground stops heaving. They are covered in stained sheets and laid out in long, neat rows away from the main body of the army camp. He walks down the rows of deceased men and wonders if there will be anyone he recognises amongst the misshapen lumps. Despondency and blankness replace what little nerve the remaining members of their squadron had retained before being faced with the harsh atrocity of war. The camp is quiet that night.

While they sleep, one man deserts. A second commits suicide.

The bodies are removed before dawn.

Gouhei's hearing returns by morning, just in time to assemble against a surprise attack by the opposing side. A cloud of black birds rise from the death-ridden No Man's Land as both armies are roused with shouts and trumpet calls. Gouhei points the birds out to Satoshi and the other man gives him a strange look. There is no time for questions however, as the second round of battle begins in earnest.

It puzzles him how much louder the noise of battle seems today. Gouhei attributes it to his temporary deafness the previous night and struggles again through the churned terrain beside fellow soldiers, clutching his new bayonet close to his chest. His bullets take out several of the enemy, the knife on the end quenches itself in the chest of one wild, wailing man whom Gouhei's panicked shots miss. An explosion rocks the ground while he's bent double and dry retching on the muddied soil, knocking him to his knees.

"War!" something screams past his ear, a high-pitched shriek that cuts through his eardrums right before a heavy weight lands on the ground above him with the sound of an incoming thunderstorm.

He claps hands to his ears with a wince as he tumbles head over heels, landing sprawled in a dark puddle that he cares not to identify. When he raises his head to see what has landed, his eyes go wide in shock.

It is the wild hair he sees first. Dirty coal-coloured locks streaming behind a feral, inhuman face. The snout resembles that of a dog, its fallow eyes that of a demon. Loose, white garb flutters as it settles into place; a knobbed staff is clutched in one talon-like hand.

"War!" it screams again, right before a second impact jolts the earth. Gouhei winces, flinching from the spray of dirt and ear-rending screech. The creature turns its narrow eyes on him with a gaze that pierces straight to his heart.

Fear clutches at him. He gasps, blinks, and the demon becomes a silhouette armed with a bayonet.

Gouhei grabs the firearm and wrenches it sideways. The twist throws the enemy soldier off-balance and lets him take the bayonet with a yank. There is no time to think: he brings the weapon underarm, aims, and fires.

The man topples over. He sees the dark, open wound his bullet has made in their skull. It is covered by dark hair and bubbling blood, pumping sluggishly from the cavity and down their neck. Something soft but firm clips his cheek and he looks up at the flock of crows and ravens wheeling overhead. A dark, dark cloud which blots out the incoming shells.

One lands to his left, close enough to push him to the ground and drown out all sound like the first. Bodies fly from the impact zone and one tumbles to a stop near him. Satoshi's face is barely recognisable past the gore.

He struggles to his feet, blinking away black and white, crows and sky. Fear has left him, replaced by numbness as he yells a hoarse cry to the birds. The hoarse cry becomes dry sobbing, which becomes reckless laughter as he stands in the eye of a sudden gale. The wind chases his feet as he flies through the battlefield, delivering death upon those that his side call 'enemies'. The silver knife bathes in red when his bullets run dry, a flashing edge shearing many a life from their pale, weak bodies.

When his bout of insanity ends, when even the wind can no longer pick up his tired feet, Gouhei's knees give way and deliver him to the firm embrace of obsidian wings.

oOo

The wind died down and the memory faded. Saburota drew back and surveyed the man lingering past his time. Their pale eyes had turned fallow and brittle, their posture slumped and heavy. He twitched his fingers and the old man slowly raised his head.

Wings, jet black and fully feathered, fanned either side of him. They touched tip to feather-tip with moulting, aging appendages. The wind danced around him, through him, blew against the elder tengu and dragged at his clothes. It pulled him up, up towards the pale blue sky, a whirl of black and dark grey feathers spiralling into the heavens. But as the elder began to rise, Saburota grasped the old one's wrinkled hands and prevented him from joining the gale.

"We've no need of war now," he said. "I'll have you watch, not break, this land."

A smile lined with rotten and rotting teeth split the tengu's ghoulish face in half. Shrinking, fading, slate feathers blossomed out of tattered linen and flaccid skin. They streamed past Saburota on their way to the clouds. Some clipped his ears, buffeted the thick, inky pinions of his own wings, until the last to disappear tickled the tip of his nose before dancing into the air to join its brethren. Saburota stood and watched the whirlwind darken, expand, thin into nothingness.

The air felt weighted when his wings withdrew and left him once more in the semblance of a man. A different weight to the humidity of Japanese summers. The feeling passed once he rolled his shoulders, calling the breeze to share the scent of its sun-warmed seasonal blooms.

A crow swooped down and alighted on his outstretched arm. It cocked its head and fixed him with one of its pale eyes.

"Fly," he murmured to it. "Be a reminder that some things should not be so lightly wished for."

The crow screamed hoarsely and whisked away, calling more of its brothers and sisters from the neighbouring trees - seven birds, all. Saburota turned away, the hem of his trousers whisking against asphalt and his geta clacking softly on concrete.

It was the beginning of summer, cicadas providing a languid pulse to the oppressive heat as throngs of students were let out of school. While a blazing sun beat down upon rising structures of glass and steel, a cooling draft made its daily commute through thriving city and countryside. Clutching a staff of twisted wood and metal, Saburota smoothed fingers over the long-dulled blade at its end and smiled as he passed a carefree group of teenagers.

Let these peaceful days reign as long as they would. He was in no hurry.


End file.
